Montreal Agency Diesel is getting a facelift. Or a rebirth. You may now behold Sid Lee commercial creativy (tm).

Commercial creativity. Now that sounds like a very bright and very intelligent notion, if you stop and consider it for a moment. Creativity applied to all levels of the commercial structure. A creative approach to commerce. Whichever way you look at it, there's definitely a fresh sound to this proposition. The basic act of commerce in itself implies an exchange, a conversation between a seller, and a potential buyer. But it also implies conversations between buyers, in consideration of the general "marketplace", in the forecast of their act of buying. This sounds a lot like a medieval town fair? It is. It has always been. The problem is that, for awhile, the advertising industry sort of lost touch with that notion. With the uprising of new mediums (internet, guerilla and street events alike) and new media sources, the industry is coming to realize the power of word-of-mouth marketing, and is trying to make use of it - but then, few are the agencies who successfully gathered the many creative marketing activities generating word-of-mouth, and joined them together as one.precise.notion. With its "Commercial Creativity", Sid Lee just entered this very small, and very exclusive club.

Sid Lee produced a (publicly available) manifesto titled "Building Strong Brands by Leveraging Conversational Capital", which is actually a dictat about the commercial power of word-of-mouth, as the result of many communicationally creative activities around a brand. It also defines how the notion of commercial creativity begins at the root of one's commercial activity: building "strong" products before building strong brands. "SIDLEE believes that word-of-mouth marketing begins long before any communication efforts can be considered; it actually originates at the product and experience-inception phase of the process", says Sid Lee in its manifesto. Wow. We've all seen it coming, now somebody actually did something about it. First. First, because you can be sure there will be nexts. Soon.

In addition to its new proposition, Sid Lee is also building the Sid Lee Collective, a creative laboratory or incubator or sorts - destined to promote Sid Lee's many experimental creative projects in their development of their Commercial Creativity (tm) notion.

In parallel to the worldwide scene, I think our Montreal advertising industry was in dire need of being conscientised to the new word-of-mouth marketing reality, and the concretisation of such a modern approach by one of our own agencies. This will provoke a huge snowball, folks, I'm telling you.

4 Reply to "Diesel is now Sid Lee. Big deal? Yes."

Anonymous
on 11:52 am

Awesome indeed. I think these guys are sailing upwind. Thanks for this great piece.

Anonymous
on 8:44 am

Dear David,

I see you've understood this is far more than a name change. I do not think our competitors got that...

Thanks for the review.

Hopefully, we will live up to your expectations.

jfbouchard@sidlee.com

Anonymous
on 12:14 pm

Hey! I understand all you have herein stated. however let me digress a little by saying that they remain, as always, call-girls of creativity. Many of them won't hesitate to suck and f*** to get money. They, like many ad agencies are servants to the status quo. I believe they are in debt too!

Midget man, that was a pretty vague and unprecise reaction. What's "being a call-girl of creativity" for an agency? And servants to status quo of what? Society? Or the advertising industry? And they'd be in debt of what?